So these evil Japanese scientists create supermice that aren’t afraid of cats, right? (See the Guardian link for an amusing video demonstration, and this link for another.)

So the South Koreans create cats that glow in the dark. And the balance of nature is restored.

I ran this by my cat, Pandora, and she’s most upset at this notion. Apparently, there’s a whole bunch of reasons cats named Pandora prefer to be invisible when they get up to whatever they get up to in the dark.

(Hat tip: James Taranto)

Laurence, a student of international politics of Commentary South Africa fame, has had an interesting article published by the Mid East Web for Coexistence. It summarises the state of play in Iraq, and notes, with caveats, some reasons for optimism. Not everyone agrees with him, sadly.

Here’s news, via Yahoo:

Scientists think they have discovered the energy source of auroras borealis, the spectacular color displays seen in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

This is just weird. I grew up with a huge world atlas published in 1972. Before the actual maps, all of which came in in several varieties to illustrate political, commercial, geographical and natural features of the earth, it contained lots of useful information on geography, ecology, astronomy, the environment (yup, environmental pollution was a major chapter even then), and demographics. It was a staple of my general knowledge education as a child.

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An open letter to the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, signed by 100 scientists, claims the UN climate conference in Bali is “taking the world in the wrong direction”.

Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems.

Among the 100 signatories, famous, infamous and otherwise, are the frequently link-worthy Luboš Motl, Ross McKitrick whom I’ve mentioned as having helped to break Michael Mann’s hockey stick temperature chart, John Maunder, who I presume is somehow related to Edward Maunder, discoverer of the correlation between sun spot cycles and in particular the Little Ice Age, Lord Lawson of Blaby, Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer who featured prominently in the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, Vincent Gray and David Evans, whom I mentioned the other day along with William Alexander, professor emeritus of the Department of Civil and Biosystems Engineering at our very own University of Pretoria.

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